Hi, hope someone can help... I've got an original XP SP2 cd, hologram license. I tried to install over W2K the license was fine but the install failed because other processes were running that I took to be W2K. I used fdisk from a win98 boot floppy to format c. The machine posts and loads dos from somewhere. When I boot with cd rom support i can see the cd and the directories, using dos commands. However the xp cd will not install. When I run D:\>setup I get the message "this program cannot be run in dos mode." Can anyone help? how do i get my machine ready to accept and run the xp install cd? any help would be much appreciated... thank you thank you thank you to anyone who will point me in the right direction.

to PCHF.

I am assuming that your XP CD is a full install CD and NOT an ungrade version.

You want to do two things.

1. Enter the BIOS and make sure that the CD drive is the first boot drive and the Hard Drive is the second boot drive.

2. Place the XP Install CD into the drive and reboot. During the install process you will want to reformat using the NTFS format.

Remember you will need an XP antivirus program.
Also, you will need to repeatedly use the Windows Update until all of the patches on installed. You check your system drivers by clicking on Start>Windows Update. Then, Click for Custom updates. Don't just do it once. Keep going back until Microsoft reports that you have no more patches to download.

If you have any problem, let us know.

Good Luck....

Hi, thanks for your comments, well, the machine posts, then an a messgae comes up stating "Missing Operating System" and that's it, the curser hangs at the end of the line and the machine does nothing else. I checked Bios and the cd drives are working fine, booting from either dvd or cd drive gives the same Missing operating system msg. You are right, the CD is a full install version of xp. I can read the directories on the cd if I boot from the Win98 floppy, this is when I get the msg This Program Cannot Run in DOS Mode. the hard drive lamp is lit permanently as if it's trying to find something but no other activity. If I attempt to boot from the cd I get the msg: Missing operating System. When i used fdisk to format the drive it prompted me to use ntfs which I did.
Any ideas would be much appreciated!

When " the machine posts, then a message comes up stating Missing Operating System" is the XP CD in the CD drive?
If so, is the computer trying to access the CD drive?

Yep! the cd is in the drive. But after booting the Missing OS msg comes up. If i boot from the floppy i get into dos, can see the optical drives and see the cd contents. I can change directories ie go from A:\> to C:\> to D:\> etc but at C:\> if I type in dir to look at the directories I get the msg Invalid Media Type reading drive c (new line) Abort, Retry, Fail? If I try and boot from the cd and not use the floppy, then the Missing Operating System msg comes up. Though I'm not too knowledgeable about pc's I've never been beaten yet! Doing my head in this is! Invalid media type... does that mean the drive hasn't been formatted afterall, when the drive was looking like it was being formatted it took a long time, longer than in the past, though I've never tried to load XP on win2k before so I wasn't sure what to expect? Look forward to your next post!

I am wondering if the XP CD is a valid Microsoft CD. The standard procedure is to boot up the computer off of the CD and the Installation procedure will automatically begin. Is it possible that the Installation CD is a unauthorized copy? That is the only reason I can think of that you are getting that error message.

Do you have access to a different computer that you could boot up the CD in to see if the same message appears? If you can and if the CD does boot up, then you can simply cancel the process at the first screen that comes up. However, if you get the same error message, then you definitely have a problem with the CD.